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[–] 45 points 10 months ago (17 children)

I don't think communism means "everyone gets paid the same regardless of work".

Also capitalism doesn't mean that people get paid more or less depending on type of work.

Capitalist means that means of productions are privately owned by capital. While in communism means of production are owned by work.

At least that's the theory.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (3 children)

    I see this definition of communism more lately, but the dictionary definition of communism absolutely does not rewards based on work. It rewards based on need. To the point where money can be abolished altogether. What you describe sounds like socialism, where the distribution of goods is based on contribution, rather than need.

    I feel like a lot of discussions surrounding communism have this issue, where people do not have the definition of communism aligned properly. Where did you learn your definition of communism? And where can one read about it? What I have been taught aligns very well with Wikipedia.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago* (2 children)

    a theory or system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs.

    You mean this dictionary definition (Oxford)?

    Needs differ, hence compensation differs. The needs of one involved in hazardous work tend to be a bit higher than those involved in baking croissants.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (1 child)

    Why would the needs of someone doing more hazardous work be higher? What do they need more food/housing/entertainment/luxury for? I guess more healthcare needs, but I don't think that is going to convince someone to do the hazardous work.

    As soon as you reward because of the hazardous working environment, it is nolonger distribution based on needs of the individual, but based on demand for the job. Rewarding based on supply and demand is capitalistic, not communistic.

    Note that I'm no supporter of either (or any) Ideology. I believe we should apply the concepts of different ideologies where they make the most sense. In this case, applying capitalism to attract people into undesirable jobs, makes sense.

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  • [+] [S] -3 points 10 months ago (12 children)
  • [–] 18 points 10 months ago* (11 children)

    They did answer your question. Same way in a "capitalist" society: those who take more responsibility or risk earn more benefit. More/better food, more rank, more commission, more salary, better housing, better medical care, etc.

    There are plenty of examples of this happening and also not happening under both capitalism and communism. Is there a trend? That's a very long debate.

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  • [+] [S] -10 points 10 months ago (10 children)
  • [–] 23 points 10 months ago (9 children)

    It's spelled "caste," and castes are (critically) hereditary. Leaving a caste you were born into is virtually impossible.

    People who do more/harder work can get compensated an appropriate amount. Note that this runs at odds to the current system where a CEO makes 1000x their employees salary despite not working 1000x as hard.

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  • [+] [S] -2 points 10 months ago (8 children)
  • [–] 13 points 10 months ago (7 children)

    Because everyone would have access to the same opportunities and same schools etc. Those with better talents or a better work ethic will probably make more money. Instead of today where families hoard wealth through generations.

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  • [+] [S] -9 points 10 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] 13 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    The tenets of capitalism say nothing about how much each person makes. Nor do communism. If you're eager to learn more, read something.

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  • [+] [S] 1 point 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)
  • [–] 15 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Very basically: communism is not “everyone gets paid the same” and it is not “no hierarchy ever.” You can still have inequality in income, status, or lifestyle. The core difference is where that inequality comes from.

    Under communism, the means of production are collectively owned, so no one gets rich purely by owning things other people have to use to survive. You do not get passive power over others just because your parents did well or you happened to own capital first.

    The baseline is that no one is excluded from basic human needs, food, housing, healthcare, education, safety. That removes the permanent underclass capitalism reliably produces. From there, differences in pay or quality of life can exist based on contribution, skill, responsibility, or scarcity, but they are not allowed to snowball into dynastic wealth and structural domination.

    So yes, different jobs can lead to different standards of living. That alone is not capitalism. Capitalism specifically requires private ownership of productive assets and wage dependence. If everyone has equal access to opportunity and no one can hoard power across generations, you do not end up with the same class system we have now.

    The honest answer is also the boring one: real-world implementations vary, some badly, and no system guarantees fairness automatically. Communism is about reducing structural exploitation, not pretending humans stop being human.

    People saying “everyone will just do awful jobs out of pure love” are overselling it and hurting the argument. Incentives still exist. The difference is that survival is not used as the incentive.

    TLDR: Capitalism uses deprivation as motivation. Communism tries to remove deprivation first, then argue about incentives afterward. Whether that succeeds is the real debate.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago

    I think you probably need to educate yourself a bit about some of the words you're using. What do you think capitalism means? Do you think there's only one way to have communism? Do you think there cannot be a market economy with communism?

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago

    In capitalism as a whole economic mobility is not very prevalent. If you are born poor you generally have a worse education, worse nutrition, worse job prospects, etc

    If you are born rich it is orders of magnitude easier to end up in a high paying career since you have a financial support system

    The idea here would be to make sure everyone is given the same tools to succeed and the same options. For example anyone who can pass their could go to med school vs only people who can afford to go without a livable income for 13 years while working 60-100 hours weeks

    Then you reward people who choose to do things others don’t want to do which is the compromise

    You can have that as home as well where the person who cleans the bathroom gets an extra cookie after dinner

    This is in huge contrast to capitalism where the owner of the house gets the entire box of cookies and is benevolent enough to spare a pittance of food in exchange for the bathroom being cleaned

    Everyone would have their basic needs met, and nobody would have 10,000x what other people have

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  • [–] 16 points 10 months ago* (2 children)

    For some people they choose these fields out of a sense of duty to the community but this is rare and not likely to fill the required productive capacity. The end goal should be automating these fields and a communist society run by workers would inherently work towards this goal. However in the mean time incentives like an early retirement and reduced working hours would likely boost numbers significantly. This is a sacrifice though as it means more people are required to do the job and these workers stop contributing to society at an earlier age, depending on the material conditions and specific stage of development this could be much harder to accomplish in which case that sense of duty would have to be reinforced by culture. The socialist transition is no paradise, it requires dangerous work and personal sacrifice to create a better world. There are likely other incentives that could be implemented more easily but these are the first two I thought of.

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  • [–] 10 points 10 months ago

    This is a good answer and I would just like to mention the democratic / assembly nature of communism. If you have an assembly where the community has to decide "who will do this tough / dangerous job?" and someone steps up to do it, they will get the respect of the community (and probably some sexual interest from the sex(es) of their choice tbh). The human-nature aspect is important, as we are social animals. We already have this going on already, like why do game crackers and pirate groups do what they do, at significant personal danger? Reputation, among other things. That goes back to the warez scene and even to phreakers and whoever else was hacking before them.

    It could also be that a certain individual enjoys the danger or difficulty of the job.

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    [–] 15 points 10 months ago* (2 children)

    In The Dispossed by Ursula Le Guin everyone takes turns at the unfavourable jobs. A character asks whether that's inefficient having to constantly train people. Well yes, is the answer, but what are you going to do? Force people to do work that kills them?

    Good book. Highly recommend

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  • [–] 8 points 10 months ago

    A lot of dangerous jobs require significant training and are safer when done or supervised by people with years of experience.

    I saw this a lot in corporate middle management treating software developers as generic assets who could just be shuffled between teams as necessary without acknowledging people have different experiences with different technologies and different competencies.

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    [–] 60 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    Under Maoism or Stalinism, aka the dictatorship of the dictator pretending to act for the proletariat? You are ordered to do it, for your own good and the good of the Party. If you don't follow orders, you just get shot; and your family is put in a prison camp, your children raped and beaten and forced to labor.

    Under real stateless, classless communism? Nobody knows, because that hasn't existed yet. Anyone claiming to know exactly how it might operate is talking out of their hat. Marx is pretty clear on that.

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  • [–] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

    This is a caricature of how socialism has functioned. In socialist states, people were compensated for their labor, and necessities were heavily subsized or otherwise free.

    To the contrary of your depiction, the USSR brought dramatic democratization to society. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about, and today we have Professor Roland Boer's Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance to reference.

    When it comes to social progressivism, the soviet union was among the best out of their peers, so instead we must look at who was actually repressed outside of the norm. In the USSR, it was the capitalist class, the kulaks, the fascists who were repressed. This is out of necessity for any socialist state. When it comes to working class freedoms, however, the soviet union represented a dramatic expansion. Soviet progressivism was documented quite well in Albert Syzmanski's Human Rights in the Soviet Union. This expansion in humanitarianism actually carried onto the judicial system, documented by Mary Stevenson Callcott in Russian Justice, written in 1935.

    Reducing the tremendous gains made by socialist countries to the whims of Stalin or Mao is extremely reductive. It means every single victory gained by the working classes, such as free healthcare and education, massive literacy campaigns, huge increases in equality among the sexes, and more were in fact the exclusive whims of their leadership. It also reduces all of their problems, struggles, and flaws to personal failings of their leadership.

    This kind of analysis is very flawed, and gets in the way of analyzing what went right and what went wrong in existing socialism. Simply painting a prettier picture of socialism in our heads and rejecting all existing socialist projects for not measuring up to that picture means we will be hopeless when we run into similar problems when we ourselves begin building socialism.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 child)

    I was talking about Maoist and Stalinist dictatorships, not socialism.

    "Communism" was the brand name that these dictatorships used for their artificially red-dyed flavor of fascist mass murder. This name was stolen from the original Communists, and falsely & deceptively used by the fascist mass-murderers. Neither Stalin nor Mao had any intention of ever living in a classless society. Like all fascist leaders, they demanded obedience beyond that accorded to feudal kings, and erected new forms of hierarchy and class for their servants to populate — while they murdered the common people in whose name they claimed to rule.

    The "dictatorship of the dictator pretending to care about the proletariat" murdered the proletariat by millions.

    However, when people today say "Communism" — as in the title of this post — they are often referring to those dictatorships, and not to the earlier Communism of Marx and Engels, whose name the fascists misappropriated.

    Hence my response, which distinguished Maoist and Stalinist fascist dictatorships from the theoretical communism of Marx and Engels.

    Do not bother making excuses for fascist mass-murderers. There are none.

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  • [–] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

    I was talking about Maoist and Stalinist dictatorships, not socialism.

    Marxist-Leninist countries, such as the USSR, PRC, Cuba, Vietnam, DPRK, Laos, etc. are all examples of socialism, and have robust systems of democracy. Again, Professor Roland Boer's Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance goes in-depth in many of these countries, explaining the intricacies of socialist democracy, as well as what's been general across all socialist states and also particular to each.

    These are all definitely socialism. The large firms and key industries, at a minimum, are publicly owned and run. Public ownership is the principle aspect of their economies, and the working classes in charge of the state. This is what the "dictatorship of the proletariat" means, the control of the state by the proletariat.

    “Communism” was the brand name that these dictatorships used for their artificially red-dyed flavor of fascist mass murder. This name was stolen from the original Communists, and falsely & deceptively used by the fascist mass-murderers.

    This is easily verified as false, though. Fascism is a violent protection of private property rights and capitalism, and happens in decaying capitalist countries. From Spain to Germany to every other fascist state, capitalists were entrenched by the state and communists murdered. Meanwhile, in socialist states, the working classes gained control, oppressing the fascists, capitalists, Tsarists, slavers, etc, and collectivized production and distribution.

    Neither Stalin nor Mao had any intention of ever living in a classless society. Like all fascist leaders, they demanded obedience beyond that accorded to feudal kings, and erected new forms of hierarchy and class for their servants to populate — while they murdered the common people in whose name they claimed to rule.

    This is more Orwellian fan-fiction than reality, though. With the advent of socialism, socialist states brought tremendous democratization. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about.

    The PCUSA made a handy graphic, here (though I'm not a member of the PCUSA):

    Further, on top of the dramatic democratization, socialism has been tremendously uplifting. When it comes to social progressivism, the soviet union was among the best out of their peers, so instead we must look at who was actually repressed outside of the norm. In the USSR, it was the capitalist class, the kulaks, the fascists who were repressed. This is out of necessity for any socialist state. When it comes to working class freedoms, however, the soviet union represented a dramatic expansion. Soviet progressivism was documented quite well in Albert Syzmanski's Human Rights in the Soviet Union.

    Healthcare was dramatically expanded, made free and high quality. Housing rates skyrocketed, jobs were assured, education was free and high quality, women's rights dramatically expanded. Literacy rates jumped from 20-30% to 99.9%. Life expectancies doubled:

    The “dictatorship of the dictator pretending to care about the proletariat” murdered the proletariat by millions.

    They didn't, though, unless you're counting deaths from unintentional famine as "murders."

    However, when people today say “Communism” — as in the title of this post — they are often referring to those dictatorships, and not to the earlier Communism of Marx and Engels, whose name the fascists misappropriated.

    When people say "communism," they refer to Actually Existing Socialism, such as the socialist states we are talking about, and to the societies Marx and Engels wrote theory to arm the proletariat to fight for. I already explained why calling communists "fascist" is wrong, so I won't retread old ground.

    When Marx and Engels spoke of the beginnings of communism, the transitional stage of socialism, they spoke of the working classes siezing control of the state, replacing it with a socialist one, and gradually collectivizing production and distribution. This requires violently oppressing the fascists, Tsarists, capitalists, kulaks, slavers, etc. The transition to the communism spoken of by Marx and Engels begins with socialism, as exists in real life.

    Hence my response, which distinguished Maoist and Stalinist fascist dictatorships from the theoretical communism of Marx and Engels.

    Your response didn't have much of Marx or Engels, nor much respect for historical fact, though. When I gave clear sources showing how you were under the wrong impression about existing socialism, you ignored them and just re-asserted your original, incorrect claims. Marxism-Leninism is a genuine continuation of the work of Marx and Engels today, and has successfully established socialism in real life.

    Do not bother making excuses for fascist mass-murderers. There are none.

    I'm not making excuses, I'm correcting the record. Socialist states and socialist leaders have all been flawed, and have all made mistakes, including major ones. They've done so because they are real, not imaginary, perfect ideas of communism. It's very common among westerners to use this ideal picture of socialism in our heads as a club against existing, real socialism for not being as perfect as our fantasies, but this works against us. If we in the west established socialism, we would too make mistakes, errors, and face struggles, because like presently existing socialism, we would be building it in real life, not just in our heads.

    Socialism in real life is genuinely real, flawed, and progressive. It's impefect, under constant siege, and blemished. It also has been tremendously uplfiting for billions of workers and peasants, and to fight against that and continue spreading debunked, outdated Red Scare mythos prevents us from meaningfully building solidarity with the global south, and sets ourselves up for failure when we refuse to learn from our comrades.

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  • [–] 24 points 10 months ago (10 children)

    Why do people do things like rock climbing and other activities that have a high risk of injury or death when mistakes are made without being paid? Some people find dangerous stuff to be more enjoyable than less dangerous stuff.

    Most dangerous jobs under capitalism are NOT well paid. People will do dangerous jobs for many reasons, but pay is rarely one of them.

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  • [+] [S] 7 points 10 months ago (9 children)
  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago (8 children)

    Your job isn’t dangerous. It’s potentially dangerous…but well-regulated and rated as very safe by employment standards.

    Resource extraction jobs, for example, are statistically the least safe and tend to not pay well.

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  • [+] [S] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (7 children)
  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago (6 children)

    Your job remains statistically safe. Calling it “dangerous” isn’t accurate.

    Your argument is like saying flying is more dangerous than other travel because you die more often when there’s an accident.

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  • [+] [S] 0 points 10 months ago* (5 children)
  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    My statements are accurate and please miss me with the ad hominem attacks…they’re not a substitute for an argument.

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  • [+] [S] 0 points 10 months ago* (3 children)
  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Yes. Chainsaws are very safe…if you get a newer chainsaw you basically have to intentionally injure yourself with it.

    Seems like this is a pointless argument about potentially dangerous vs statistically dangerous.

    I’ll concede that you’re paid well because all the training you receive to make your dangerous job safe puts a premium on labour in your sector. Better?

    I’m trying to stick to your original question, though: the most (statistically) dangerous jobs under capitalism aren’t very well paid - relatively (like resource extraction), and under communism all jobs aren’t paid the same.

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  • [–] 25 points 10 months ago*

    Why are some people veterinarians? Specialized and low paying for the amount of education needed and debt incurred.

    Why are some people firefighters? Dangerous and not particularly high paying.

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  • [–] 16 points 10 months ago

    Without subversive profit incentives, the incentives become to make necessary-but-undesirable jobs more safe/pleasant/automated. Without worrying about their next paycheque, people can spend time on the issue.

    This requires a post-scarcity society that is fairly well developed, before they try to convert to communism.

    I wouldn't necessarily say that capitalism pays dangerous or unpleasant jobs well, though. Some do, but lots don't.

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  • [–] 7 points 10 months ago

    You get more stuff, more status, etc. Or alternatively, penalized, threatened, etc. Whatever it takes to motivate people to do the job. Even if paper money isn't a thing in communist societies (which it still is), money's just a symbol for debt. You're going to get something, somehow, for a job people greatly desire to be done without enough doers and they'll become "indebted" to you disproportionately for doing it.

    In Soviet society for instance, you might be provided a nice apartment in central Moscow if you were doing something "important". This assignment would be via your government-controlled employer and their agreements with some other government bureau that officially managed the buildings to dole them out to select people.

    So, same deal as anywhere else, just a different mechanism. Higher ration, bigger dacha, jump to the front of the line to get a car, etc.

    Compensation is usually not much about how dangerous a job is, though. It's more about how many people are willing to do it for any number of reasons. Some people are just not very risk-adverse, and figure they're going to be fine at a job that is more dangerous. And they'll be compensated at a normal level as long as there are enough such people to fill the need.

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  • [–] 7 points 10 months ago

    For advanced STEM degrees, there are people who just enjoy learning that sort of thing and applying their knowledge.

    In the same vein, some folks are just attracted to dangerous and difficult jobs because they get a sense of purpose or identity from it.

    Others it's community. I knew a guy who did 20 years active duty military, then joined the national guard, then took a job for the same national guard unit as a DoD civilian and stayed on until they forced him to retire. They had practically drag the guy out. He never did anything but bitch and complain about the work he spent more than 40 years doing, he sounded like kinda hated his job, but he liked being a part of the military.

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    Same as the incentives under any other economic system: Ambition, adventurousness, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.

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  • [+] [S] 1 point 10 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago* (2 children)

    So your thinking is that you don't want to live in a world where people aren't coerced into doing jobs they hate, because then you personally wouldn't be coerced into doing the job you hate? Just saying you might consider looking for other work.

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  • [+] [S] 3 points 10 months ago* (1 child)
  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago*

    The world as we know it is rapidly approaching the point where it's going to cease to function. Ecology matters, and climate change is going to wreck the world economy we know and love if war doesn't wreck it first. Whether hypothetical future better-organized societies should choose to put as much effort into steelmaking as we do seems highly questionable, but it's up to them.

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago

    the highly dangerous jobs usually are done by red states people: crab fishing in alaska, Oil drilling, fracking, lumber, because the lack of Economy and jobs in thier own state, which is probably on purpose. it all pads the pockets of the elites.

    assuming this isnt the case with communist top down RULE, it should be STEM fields, including psychology, environmental conservation, social sciences is a priority.

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  • [–] 24 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (18 children)

    Your personal motivations don’t represent any society, at large.

    Your premise is that people only choose jobs because of the salary? I reject that premise. All information I’m aware of tells us that most people choose jobs because of aptitude, interest, skills and prestige, not because of financial concerns (given that all jobs compensate equally).

    It should also be noted that communism doesn’t mean uniform pay. You need to go back to the drawing board and rephrase your question.

    Also it’s absurd to suggest that capitalism rewards dangerous jobs more, when it clearly doesn’t. Your example is terrible because power generation is heavily regulated and very safe. The most dangerous jobs are extraction or harvesting jobs, and they can be high paid…but are not well paid in the most dangerous circumstances.

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  • [–] 14 points 10 months ago* (9 children)

    I agree with your sentiment but it's absurd to tell OP that his job is "very safe". Until you've seen what heavy industry is really like, I'd refrain from commenting on it. I'm an industrial electrician and I've worked in steel mills, foundries, factories, power plants, etc.

    It can truly be the wild west out there. Operators have a tough job in often sketchy situations, heavy machinery, around nasty chemicals and fumes and just the dirtiest grime. Mills fucking suck for example. We've been working on the Oswego plant in upstate New York which is the largest supplier of aluminum for Ford. It burned down, twice. There was a giant ass hole in the roof from the fire and like 12 feet of water in the basement from all the fire departments spraying where all the electrical equipment is. Then when they were fixing shit, another fire happened from someone welding on the roof.

    This is an extreme example, but it is insane how the world works sometimes. I was 22 working on a solar power plant out west and the maintenance guys told me everything was locked out and off. I do a dead check and find 1000v on the busbar from a row of solar panels on some shit I was just about to work on. "Oh yeah that disconnect box is broke, we don't shut that one off" was the response.

    Safety and regulation can only get you so far unfortunately. Safety is always #1 all these places say but you really gotta be on and alert and conscious of what's going on around you at all times. Injuries can happen in an instant

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    I think there's a difference between a job being dangerous and a job having statistically significant dangerous outcomes. What you seem to be describing is a job with many dangers, but you don't provide data on if the job actually produces outcomes caused by a dangerous environment more than most jobs. Something like this provides evidence on what jobs are statistically dangerous in the US at least: https://www.bls.gov/charts/census-of-fatal-occupational-injuries/civilian-occupations-with-high-fatal-work-injury-rates.htm

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  • [–] 8 points 10 months ago*

    When you've visited enough industrial plants and seen the wildly ranging safety standards and practices, the aggregated statistics just aren't very interesting.

    I've been to a plant, a Superfund site that supplies a material strategically necessary to the US, and which will thus never be closed - that released clouds of chlorine gas daily. Staff at the neighboring plant have to literally watch for yellow clouds and fuckin run when they see them.

    Paper mills? Even just their "man lifts" (thankfully going the way of the dinosaur), something like a vertical conveyor belt where you stand on this narrow pad to rapidly ascend floors - hilariously dangerous.

    Any kind of metal extraction and processing with strong acids, incidents do happen. Worst I personally observed (far from the worst I've heard of) I got called to remotely help assess a refining plant using lots of gross acids, after an earthquake caused a plant evacuation and an unknown cloud of mixed something started building above it.

    Some of the high tech processes I've seen are truly chilling. Like, "no one in a 100 ft radius survives at all if this stuff gets released".

    I did that work for less than 10 years. Statistics are great, but they also hide nuance like it's their job. Anyone who has done this kind of work understands the elevated danger, though it does vary a lot from place to place (really more industry to industry).

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  • [–] -2 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    The OP didn’t say they were in “heavy industry” they said they were in a specific job. A job I happen to know is safe.

    Not sure why you’d make an unforced error and change his job to your job. Especially when I literally said your job was among the most dangerous in my reply.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (3 children)

    He already replied to you saying his job is dangerous. He said he's around hot and explosive shit all day. I've been in power plants and that's the example I gave that some of them are not fucking safe. We built panels for this nuke plant and the guy was telling me you can't touch some of the handrails because you'll get shocked .

    Really don't care about how you feel about it because I've seen it with my eyes.

    Weird hill to die on

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  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago*

    His job is potentially dangerous, not statistically dangerous. It’s statistically very safe. We don’t call air travel less safe because you might die more often when there’s an accident…the analogy holds here.

    It’s beside the point because the most dangerous jobs aren’t well paid under capitalism, and you misunderstand communism if you believe that all jobs pay the same.

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  • [+] [S] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (7 children)
  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    I don't think he's taking a shitty stance in stating that your job is relatively safe. Just that there are tons of safety regulations and protections that keep your profession off of a list like this

    https://www.bls.gov/charts/census-of-fatal-occupational-injuries/civilian-occupations-with-high-fatal-work-injury-rates.htm

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  • [–] -3 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    You gave me a very specific job title…one that I happen to know is statistically safe. If you have data that proves otherwise, present it.

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  • [+] [S] 3 points 10 months ago* (2 children)
  • [–] -3 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Your job remains statistically safe for all the reasons you stated. Yes, your job has a very high proportion of fatalities vs injuries…I accounted for that.

    I’m not trying to diminish you or your job. I’m just saying you’re paid well, not because it’s dangerous, but rather because you need a lot of expertise to do it and it’s more difficult for your industry to find people that fit the qualifications.

    The most dangerous jobs, like the ones I listed earlier, do not tend to pay very well if “danger” is your only metric.

    Getting back to the topic, under communism people who work in dangerous or high skilled jobs would be more likely to make more money…not less.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago

    Same for people who maintain septic systems, like diving in lakes of feces. I'm not sure how that would look

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago

    Prestige and desire, likely.

    You would probably also see the state require some labor from people in order for society to function; I imagine that certain classes of skilled and or dangerous labor would get them from having to contribute to some manual tasks.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (6 children)

    Not to pry but what do you consider "good pay" for those conditions?

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  • [+] [S] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (5 children)
  • [–] 7 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    So you evaluated that 114k a year is worth a chance at your life? What's the lowest you'd go?

    The biggest problem is that's not really a considerable sum of value compared to what the upper 1% makes. There's ALOT of wealth to go around that has been systematically stolen from you. I wouldn't doubt a socialist society could provide you, and most people actually, the same level of luxury you are afforded today.

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  • [+] [S] 1 point 10 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago

    Isnt this a little contradictory to your earlier statement? Your income is what everyone has to make to live comfortably, a state which could easily be provided by many systems, and now you say you love it even though the luxury it affords you is around the same as an experienced flight attendant. Would that mean you'd work the same job for any system that provided for you? Considering your affinity for the job?

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago

    There's definitely motivation outside of pay. People can value doing jobs that are critical for society knowing that they're helping

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    None. But highly dangerous and specialized fields were always something the creative explored regardless of the ideology.

    Pioneers will always exist whether capitalism or communism.

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    [–] 6 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    Short answer: We don't know

    Longer answer: We hope technology will be fully developed by then to do that stuff for us

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  • [+] [S] 1 point 10 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Communism doesn't mean no money, undesirable labor will always have to be incentivized. I think most people would prefer to be incentivized with the promise of access to luxuries, higher pay, more vacation time, recognized status in the community, rather than the threat of your survival, housing, healthcare, education, etc. You would still have taxes, but critical infrastructure would be owned by the laborers and the state.

    Ideally, because there would be no individual ownership of infrastructure or the means of production. So, again ideally, the profits are equitably distributed through labor instead of shareholders. One of the goals of this kind of system would be the elimination of class. Not because people can't make more money and have more luxuries, but because everyone has the same opportunities. Whereas most of the world today you can just pay for those opportunities.

    Now, how exactly do you pull this off? Idk, other than a massive cultural shift. I'm sure someone with a reply telling me what I got wrong will have that answer.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago

    This isn't entirely accurate. What you described is a 'socialist' community, the so-called 'lower stage of communism'. In this stage, there would still remain incentive based structures for labour. It employs a policy of "from each according to his ability to each according to his works". Inequality still exists as explained by Marx here:

    This equal right is still constantly stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation… one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another… Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal share in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another. — Critique of the Gotha Programme

    It is during this lower stage that the transformation of social relations and productive forces gradually alters the motivations for labor to a more virtue-based one.

    The problem most communism skeptic people have with communism is that they reason within the current modes of subsistence and assume it is impossible.

    “What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.” — Critique of the Gotha Programme

    Marx also stated that he expected us to remain in the lower stage of communism for centuries, but it is during this stage that we prepare the productive forces to sustain communism and start producing goods for their use-value rather than for their exchange value, so that we can achieve the higher stage of communism which employs 'from each according to their ability to each according to his needs. This higher stage is truly classless because we would supposedly have solved scarcity, it would be stateless because people would organize communally to meet their needs, and it would be moneyless because the means of production and means of subsistence would be free for all to access.

    In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor… has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want… only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be fully left behind and society inscribe on its banners: ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!’ — Critique of the Gotha Programme

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago (13 children)

    Most people who specialize do it just for the love of the game.

    They are apathetic wether people pay them or not.

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  • [+] [S] 4 points 10 months ago (12 children)
  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago (11 children)

    Granted, but you are not everyone.

    Max Planck definitely was not motivated by greed.

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  • [+] [S] -1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (10 children)
  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

    By definition, it kinda is.

    You are looking for monetary compensation for a skill you developed.

    Edit to add: you are not a greedy person by wanting to survive. Neither are notable scientists completely altruistic. But the most memorable ones that leave a mark are not concerned with surviving. That may be because of their heritage more than their motivation.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (6 children)

    Are you suggesting your skill is more valuable than others? If so by which standard? What determines how valuable a skill is?. Or do you think other people don't develop their skills as well?

    I don't know what you do for a living, but realistically unless you are a farmer your job is not actually essential. People can survive decades without doctors, can police themselves, etc, granted it would be a worse life than currently, but it's survivable (and I don't think you're in either of these positions either, if I were to bet I would say you work in something that's completely irrelevant to society but that earns money to some rich guy). However everyone needs to eat, so why do you think your skill is more important than the skill of the people actually keeping you alive?.

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  • [+] [S] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (5 children)
  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Homie, I'm asking this in all honesty. How many people do you run into on a day to day basis that lists their credentials?

    You gotta take a step back and reflect.

    I'm not trying to be mean. I want you to be a happier person.

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  • [–] -1 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Hospitals and other critical locations have generators, so while blackouts are an inconvenience they rarely cause deaths. They might not be common where you live in part thanks to you, but other parts of the world have blackouts and people are fine. I'm not saying your job is not dangerous or important, but you might be overestimating your importance.

    Regardless your job is something that would be considered "essential" on a broader scope, therefore would be highly compensated in any form of communism. During a transitional period it would be highly paid, and if ever money gets abolished it would be recompensated in other ways. On the other hand in capitalism your job is not that highly recompensated, because capitalism pays more for what makes more money regardless of how useful or dangerous it is. For example a quick search tells me that the median salary in the US for your position is 88k, whereas the median salary for a programmer is 133k, and I assure you my job is less dangerous and essential than yours.

    That being said, dangerous or undesirable jobs should be automated away, if you think no one would want to be a power plant operator if they could do whatever they want to, then the proper solution is to get rid of the job entirely. No one should be forced to do something they don't like just so they can pay their bills, we have enough technology to automate at least the dangerous parts of the job, it's just that under capitalism that money it's better spent elsewhere because your life is worth approximately 88k per year.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

    I think this is a bit like the question at the other end of the scale for desirability: Who gets resources that there is competition for (like prime real-estate)?

    I don't think communism is logically consistent in a pure form to handle it. I think that's why most governments are a mis-mash with some social support and some capitalism. I think its kind of like that Churchill quote:

    Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago
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